Page 12 of The Alpha's Arranged Mate

“Good evening, big brother,” he said, knowing the cheerful tone wouldn’t do a damn thing against Darion’s anger. “It was nice to be in the same room again—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Darion said, cutting him dead. “The others are gone, there’s no need to play nice any longer.”

Ah, Reeve thought faintly. He’d forgotten just how good Darion was at taking all the wind out of his sails. “I wasn’t playing,” he said remotely. “But fine. What do you want?”

“I want you to treat Lyrie with more respect.”

Reeve took a deep breath before he responded, not liking how much anger was boiling in his chest, how quickly his defensiveness had leapt up in his throat. “What do you mean?”

“Keeping her prisoner on that absurd vessel of yours. Surrounding her with people she doesn’t know or trust. Isolating her in some dreadful room where the walls are in control of the temperature, refusing to let her participate in the leadership of your so-called pack… you’re keeping her like a pet, not welcoming her as an equal, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Enough,” Reeve snapped, knowing that if he let his brother keep talking he was going to end up hitting him. “Where the hell is any of this coming from? Isolating her? I arranged for her to have her own quarters so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about sharing with a complete stranger. Thanks for not giving her any blasted warning on that, by the way. How could you let her walk up to the altar without warning her that she was pledging herself to your twin brother?”

“That’s beside the point—”

“No, Darion, I don’t think it is. You can’t tell me I’m treating this girl like a pet when you didn’t even warn her about who she was pledging herself to.”

“How dare you. She’s like a daughter to me,” Darion growled, eyes narrowing. “She’s the closest thing I have to family.”

That particular comment would hurt later, Reeve knew that, but he was so angry that in the heat of the moment he barely felt it. “Some father figure you are, marrying her off to your evil traitor of a twin brother,” Reeve snarled. “You can’t care that much for her if you’re willing to give her to someone you hate so much—”

The blow surprised him. It was so fast he felt the strike before he saw Darion move—a sharp pain shot through his jaw, his teeth clicking together and his head rocketing back as he absorbed the impact of his brother’s open-handed slap. His eyes widened and he felt his wolf tense in him, and for a moment he was sure the two of them were about to shift and wrestle on the steps of the library like they had when they were pups. But then he saw the look on Darion’s face, and the anger in him cooled immediately. Had he ever seen his brother look so lost, so lonely? And then, predictable as the tides, he saw Darion’s face still as he restored that stoic mask again.

“I shouldn’t have struck you. That was beneath me.”

“Non-apology accepted.” Reeve rubbed his face, feeling tired to his bones. “Darion, I’ve been trying for months to fix this. I don’t know what you want from me. Everything I do just makes you angrier with me. I thought…” He gestured at the island around them, Kurivon’s thick vegetation barely visible by starlight. “I thought coming here with you might be… a new start. We’re both here to build something important, aren’t we? Isn’t working together meant to bring people closer?”

Darion’s face was impassive. “Maybe some damage can’t be repaired. Maybe some insults can’t be forgiven.”

“All of this about Lyrie? Darion, I don’t know what to tell you. None of this soulmate ritual crap was my idea. I agreed to it because I wanted peace, and now you’re even more mad at me?”

“Lyrie is important to me. The way you’re treating her—”

“I’m treating her fine,” he snapped, losing his temper. “Maybe you should have taken her yourself if you were going to get this jealous.”

Even as the words left his lips, he knew he’d gone too far. Darion absorbed what he’d said quietly… and then, before Reeve could so much as open his mouth to apologize, he was gone. Reeve watched the great wolf picking up speed as he ran away from the library and was swallowed by the night.

Great, he thought faintly. What a constructive council meeting. The first conversation he’d had with his brother in months, and it couldn’t possibly have gone any worse.

Chapter 8 - Lyrie

Lyrie felt uneasy all day. Had she overstepped with Reeve that morning? She’d done her best to be polite, but it was so hard to get a handle on the kind of strength he and his wolves responded to. They were so frightened of conflict, so fixated on being polite that they never actually addressed any concerns—hadn’t that been part of the problem she’d identified at the construction site? It had been incredibly valuable to talk with the workers from her old pack. She was stunned that Reeve hadn’t thought to do the same thing. After all, he’d been a member of this pack, once. That bond didn’t just disappear overnight… though something told her that he didn’t understand that the hostility her former packmates showed him didn’t run as deep as he might imagine.

She wanted to make him understand. She’d been so hopeful that they might be able to have a real conversation that she’d woken before dawn and waited with rising frustration for the staff to take his breakfast into his quarters, an indication that he was at least awake. And though he’d listened to a little of what she had to say, it hadn’t been long before he’d shut off and sent her away. Should she have waited until later in the day, she wondered? Should she have been nicer? Watching his body language with his advisors the other day had been interesting. He didn’t hold himself like a leader, not the way Darion did… but nevertheless, his packmates seemed to respond to him well. His style of leadership was utterly unfamiliar to her, but she genuinely wanted to learn more about it.

Which was why it was infuriating to learn, that evening, that he had left the yacht to attend a Council meeting. He hadn’t even let her know he was leaving, let alone invited her to attend… she stalked the decks of the yacht as the sun set, debating whether she should simply follow along and turn up uninvited. Only the knowledge that the leader of the Alphas would be there stopped her. It would be profoundly disrespectful to his authority to turn up without an invitation, and the last thing she needed was to weaken her position.

And so she did something she’d never imagined doing. She returned to her quarters in her human shape, changed into her undergarments, and made for the pool she’d discovered on her first day on the yacht. She’d learned that Reeve frequented this place late at night, swimming up and down in his human body to maintain the strength of his muscles. It had made her feel a little guilty for assuming he’d let his training slip. Surely a body like his couldn’t have remained so muscular without effort… that thought brought a strange flush to her face which she did her level best to ignore.

The water felt pleasantly cool against her skin, and even the odd chemical scent to the water wasn’t as objectionable as she’d originally found it. Cautiously at first, but then with more confidence, she began to paddle up and down the length of the pool, lit only by occasional moonlight peeping through the patchy blanket of clouds above them. Even the moonlight felt different here. It had made her feel lonely and homesick for a while, but as she warmed to the repetitive, meditative work of swimming laps, she realized she didn’t seem to mind so much.

Swimming was deceptively exhausting, she realized when she emerged from the water. She wasn’t breathing hard, but the pleasant warmth in her muscles told her she’d been working harder than she’d imagined. She could see why Reeve preferred this to the training ring on the mainland. A solitary pursuit, no company but your own, nobody to compete against but yourself. Lyrie took a fluffy towel from a hamper and wrapped it around herself—only to jump when she turned to see a familiar silhouette standing in the doorway that led back into the yacht.

“I didn’t know if you could even swim in this body,” Reeve said, a half-smile on his face as he moved out into the moonlight. She pulled the towel a little closer, feeling oddly exposed. The foolishness of this fragile body without hair, that needed to be wrapped in layers of fabric for civility to be maintained. There was something about the way his eyes burned through her that made her feel, somehow, like the towel wasn’t there at all.

“How was the Council meeting?” she asked coolly. Always a reliable gambit when you were feeling vulnerable, to go on the attack. “I do apologize for my absence. Unfortunately, nobody told me it was happening.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Reeve said tiredly, sitting down on the edge of one of the deck chairs and rubbing his forehead. “It was shitty of me to go without you. Bad enough you’ve been stuck here with nobody to talk to but me, I shouldn’t have shut you out of a meeting where they’d actually be speaking your language. You’ll be at the next one, I promise. If you’d like to even the score, I’ll even sit it out.”

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